"NASA is not currently considering a human return to the moon and remains focused on the asteroid-retrieval mission," James Clay Moltz, a professor in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California,

Red tape is making it tougher for researchers to study and characterize asteroid strikes on Earth, which are apparently more common than previously thought, experts say. The bureaucratic snafu affects the use of U.S. government space assets that help...

Citizen scientists take note: You can help save the planet from threatening space rocks, and win some prize money to boot. NASA and asteroid-mining company Planetary Resources have teamed up to launch a contest series called "Asteroid Data Hunter," w...

During the week, we consume words in snackable, tweetable bites. But on the weekends, we have the time to take a dive into the murkier, lengthier depths of the Internet and expand our attention spans beyond 140 characters. We can brew a cup of coffee...

Earth got most of its water from asteroid impacts nearly 4.6 billion years ago, shortly after the solar system first took shape, a new study suggests. Researchers studying a meteorite that fell to Earth in 2000 found evidence that the water in its pa...

There are more than 10,000 near-Earth objects that have been identified so far — asteroids and comets of varying sizes that approach the Earth’s orbital distance to within about 28 million miles. Of the 10,000 discoveries, roughly 10% are larger than...

A small asteroid harmlessly zipped by Earth closer than the orbit of the moon on Wednesday. At just 3 to 10 feet in diameter, the tiny asteroid — called 2013 RZ53 — would have burned up in Earth's atmosphere if it were on a collision course with the ...

NASA continues to broaden its search for ideas that could help prevent killer asteroids from striking Earth. Agency officials will attend the World Maker Faire in New York City on Saturday and Sunday, with the goal of convincing the global community ...

As NASA continues to plan out its ambitious mission to snag an asteroid and park it near the moon, the space agency will consider nearly 100 ideas submitted by potential partners. NASA has selected the top 96 proposals of more than 400 submitted by o...

Asteroids that pass close to Earth have become the focus of increased attention in recent years, in part because of the potential threat they pose to humanity. But they are also a potential boon. For decades, science fiction writers and various space...

Potential asteroid collisions have been big in the news lately, and as a nation, we're are more afraid of them than we've ever been. This might have to do with the fact that, in the past, we've had more imminent threats to fear -- like polio and gett...

Two astronauts are now auctioning their personal space artifacts in a bid to help protect the Earth from asteroids. Apollo 9 spacewalker Rusty Schweickart and International Space Station flight engineer Ed Lu have put up for sale flown-in-space missi...

A draft authorization bill from the House Science space subcommittee would cap NASA spending at about $16.87 billion for the next two years, prohibit a proposed asteroid retrieval mission, overhaul the agency's management structure and raise the spen...

There may be killer asteroids headed for Earth, and NASA has decided to do something about it. The space agency announced a new "Grand Challenge" on June 18 to find all dangerous space rocks and figure out how to stop them from destroying our planet....

An asteroid wider than nine ocean liners sailed safely past Earth today (May 31), making its closest flyby of our planet for at least the next 200 years. Asteroid 1998 QE2, which is about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) wide, cruised within 3.6 million mi...

A massive asteroid nearly 2 miles wide will zip by Earth on May 31, in a cosmic event that has grabbed the attention of stargazers, scientists and even White House officials. The asteroid poses no threat of hitting Earth during the flyby, NASA offici...

NASA's plan to lasso an asteroid for astronauts as a deep-space dry run for a future mission to Mars has some members of Congress wondering if the space agency would be better off setting its sights on the moon instead. The asteroid mission was annou...

NASA unveiled a $17.7 billion spending plan for 2014 today that continues major ongoing space exploration projects, while including funds to kick-start an audacious new mission to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon so astronauts can e...

NASA will likely get $100 million next year to jump-start an audacious program to drag an asteroid into orbit around the moon for research and exploration purposes, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson says. The $100 million will probably be part of President Ba...

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